The present invention relates to an audiographics teleconferencing system.
As is known in the prior art, teleconferencing systems which permit users to transmit audio and image data (such as graphical information on a document) between a sending terminal and a receiving terminal at a remote location. The users of such a system can telephonically discuss the aspects of particular documents, which can be transmitted via a conventional facsimile machine from the sending terminal to the receiving terminal. However, a plurality of users (such as three or more) have in general not been able to participate in such a teleconference. The prior art has not provided the capability of establishing teleconferencing capabilities between a sending terminal and a plurality of receiving terminals. One reason for this deficiency has been a point-to-point facsimile transmission requirement, which generally requires one facsimile transceiver to communicate with only one other facsimile transceiver at a time.
A further problem with teleconferencing systems is the fact that conventional facsimile transceivers will frequently "hang up" during the conference if an error or some other type of problem occurs during document transmission. This of course is undesirable in teleconferencing systems.
Another problem in the prior art is that while teleconferencing systems can include both transmission of image information for hard copy purposes as well as for transparency (viewgraph) purposes, there has been no capability of a simultaneous type of communication aspect.